If you want to learn more about how DNA can help find criminals (and others), you probably will want to read an article written by Brian Bouchard and published in the WAGMTV web site at: https://www.wagmtv.com/2022/06/20/how-your-dna-could-be-used-help-solve-cold-cases/.

This article is an excellent introduction to the subject although long-time DNA experts probably will find it to be a bit too basic for their use.

Bouchard describes a recent local case in which law enforcement personnel used the services of Investigative Genetic Genealogists to identify a person based upon DNA information. He writes, "...in cases like this one, the victim's DNA undergoes full genome sequencing in an attempt to find any matches against a third party database. The database is primarily made up of at home DNA test results."

He briefly mentions the controversy of privacy concerns concerning the use of public DNA databases that were not created for purposes of law enforcement. However, there are other online articles that discuss those concerns in greater depth than does this one article.

Comment by Dick Eastman: I was rather surprised and impressed to see this article published in the WAGMTV web site. Many years ago, I was employed at WAGM for several years and none of the employees ever mentioned DNA (to me) in those days. It is nice to see today's employees are keeping up with the current technology.

Summer officially kicks off in the Northern Hemisphere today (June 21), marking the longest day of the year. And to our readers in the Southern Hemisphere, welcome to the first day of winter!

During the June solstice (or summer solstice), the sun reaches its highest and northernmost points in the sky. Delivering the maximum daylight hours of the year for the Northern Hemisphere and minimum daylight hours of the year in the Southern Hemisphere.

This year, the summer solstice officially occurred at 5:14 a.m. EDT (0914 GMT), when the sun reached a point directly overhead of the Tropic of Cancer (latitude 23.5 degrees north).

In addition to the longest day of the year and the start of summer, the June solstice also occurs at the moment the northern half of Earth is tilted toward the sun, resulting in the Northern Hemisphere receiving sunlight at the most direct angle of the year.

As always, there are two sides to every story. While the Northern Hemisphere welcomes longer days and warmer temperatures, the June solstice marks the beginning of winter in the Southern Hemisphere when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky.

The following announcement was written by the Southern California Genealogical Society:

You won’t want to miss out on this year’s Jamboree, with the Genealogy Jamboree conference; Genetic Genealogy conference; and JamboFREE sessions in between, and over 80 sessions on a wide variety of topics from the some of the best speakers in the field! Come learn about invaluable genealogy research and DNA techniques you can use in the process, while researching the British Isles and Ireland, from highly knowledgeable speakers in the field, Michael Brophy, MBA; Alice M. Fairhurst, MS; Sue McNelly; David Ryan, MA. DIPGEN; and James G. Ryan, PhD! Don’t forget to join the FREE British Isles and the Irish Round Tables, on our JamboFreeday for tips and tricks to use in your ancestry research! Read the Jamboree British Isles and Irish Track Speaker’s bios and view their topic summaries!  Meet the Speakers View the schedule for the JamboFree Ethnic Round Tables and other Round Tables!  JamboFree Special Events View the schedule Jamboree!  Explore the Schedule View all the Genealogy Jamboree and Genetic Genealogy tracks! Jamboree 2022 by Track Ready to learn invaluable genealogy techniques?!  Register Now!

The following press release was written by the University of Michigan:

A new public database of African American students created by the University of Michigan documents students who attended U-M between 1853 and as recently as 1970.

A comprehensive compilation of this nature did not previously exist at the university and remains very rare for universities across the country.

In the process, hundreds of compelling stories have been uncovered surrounding segregated housing, relocation after slavery and “segregation scholarships,” which originated in the 1920s.

“What we have discovered is that it was African American students, their organizations, the local community and African American alumni who carved out lives for themselves on this campus, often with no help and with opposition from the university itself,” said Terrence McDonald, director of the Bentley Historical Library.

“For most of the university’s history, African American students’ experiences were a combination of institutional barriers and the determination to overcome them,” said Angela Dillard, the Richard A. Meisler Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies and a member of the Bentley’s executive committee. “The database gives context for this by providing data while also showing photos, stories, maps and more.”

The U-M African American Student Project has been working toward documenting and understanding the Black experience at the university through years of research, archival materials from the Bentley Library and personal stories. The project has identified more than 5,800 verified African American students, their cities or states of origin and their degree types.

Points of origin

More than 2,200 of the students in the database came from Michigan with the top points of origin including Detroit representing more than half of this student population, Ann Arbor, Flint, Inkster and Grand Rapids. Among out-of-state students, the top states were North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Louisiana and Florida. Many of the southern out-of-state students received financial support to come to Michigan from those states which, in the pre-Civil Rights era, refused to integrate their university programs. Many of these states were forced to integrate their programs by future federal court decisions. A substantial number of those receiving graduate and professional degrees from Michigan were graduates from historically black colleges and universities, with the largest number coming from Fisk and Howard universities.

Notable alumni

While work is still being done to collect more stories and journeys of U-M Black students, some notable alumni have already been identified:

• • Heman Sweatt attended graduate school at U-M in 1937-38 and went on to successfully challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson in his own U.S. Supreme Court case, Sweatt v. Painter. His case was presented by Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter after Sweatt was denied admission to the University of Texas law school due to the Texas State Constitution prohibiting integrated education. During the term of the trial, the subject matter prompted Texas Southern University to establish its own law school for Black students, becoming what is now known as the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

• • A.T. Walden was a civil rights activist and lawyer who earned his law degree at U-M and later went on to become the first Black judge appointed in the state of Georgia since the Civil War. He played a critical role in achieving equal pay for black school teachers in Atlanta in 1943, served as a local lawyer for the NAACP in some cases with national leadership, and actively led efforts to get Black citizens registered to vote in Atlanta. 

The work is not over

Now the university is putting out a call to action to its community. The African American Student Project has identified the “who, when, where” of thousands of Black students, but they recognize there is more to be added to more deeply understand their experience and their stories. 

“This is a long-term project that is still in an early phase,” McDonald said. “We will need help from the public to make this data as robust as possible, and to add additional archival sources on the African American experience to our holdings.”

Most of us have been told by a friend that we have a doppelganger - some stranger they passed on the street who bore an uncanny resemblance to you. But imagine if you could create your very own twin, an exact copy of yourself, 

Scientists now say that may be possible within the next decade.

We are living in an age where everything that exists in the real world is being replicated digitally - our cities, our cars, our homes, and even ourselves.

And just like the hugely-hyped metaverse - plans for a virtual, digital world where an avatar of yourself would walk around - digital twins have become a new, talked-about tech trend.

A digital twin is an exact replica of something in the physical world, but with a unique mission - to help improve, or in some other way provide feedback to, the real-life version.

You can learn more in an article by Jane Wakefield published in the BBC News web site at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61742884.

I have two questions that pop to mind: Could I send my digital twin to the office at my place of employment every day? That way I could stay home and take every day off while my digital twin could earn a living for me!

Will genealogists record the digital twin as a member of the family?

The following announcement was written by the Irish Ancestral Research Association (TIARA):

Virtual Celtic Connections Conference 2022

It's not too late to register for CCC 2022!

It's not too late to register for the Virtual Celtic Connections Conference--JOURNEY HOME! 

The focus of the conference is Irish, Scots-Irish, Scottish and Welsh Genealogy and Research Topics.

 Mark your calendars! CCC 2022 begins July 9, 2022 and ends September 30, 2022.

The details for the CCC 2022 Conference are:

• Twenty-one international and national speakers will deliver forty-nine pre-recorded talks

• Talks will be available 24/7 for almost three months

• Twenty-one live chats over the course of the three months

• At least 3 other small group meetings

• $99 for full conference

• Five Conference Tracks

• One-year free TIARA membership for new members.

Conference Tracks:

• Researching the Celtic Diaspoa

• Emigration and Immigration Patterns

• Unique Research Resources

• DNA

• Methodologies,

• Case Studies

Visit the conference website www.celtic-connections.org for more detailed information and updates.

Questions? Contact: registration@celtic-connections.org

Dallas County Clerk John Warren read a property inventory list in a probate record from the mid-1800s that includes the record of slaves in Dallas County.

"This particular book is related to the estate of Francis Daniel, who is also the owner of the Daniel Cemetery," he explained.

A historical marker now sits at Daniel Family Cemetery that’s now in University Park. The first person buried there was identified as a slave named "Old Frank" in 1850.

You can read more in an article written by Shaun Rabb and published in the Fox4 web site at: https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-county-clerk-uncovers-slave-record-from-the-1800s.

My thanks to Irene Rakovan for telling me about this article.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

"If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium."

Where will you go on your next vacation trip? A trip to New England? Washington, D.C.? How about to the beach? Or how about a European vacation? How about taking a trip to the town where your grandparents grew up or visiting the country of your ancestors? What if you could actually walk the same streets as your great-great grandfather or see the home where your grandmother was born? This is something you want to put on your bucket list.

A trip back to the old home town or to "the old country" can be an immensely satisfying experience. Those who prepare for the trip usually report they have great memories and photographs of the experience.

While it is always worthwhile to visit town clerks, courthouses, libraries, and other repositories wherever your ancestors lived, you also will want to spend some time looking for old cemeteries and perhaps for the land where the old homestead stood. This provides an interesting look at history and the hardships your ancestors faced, even if the old farm is now a shopping center. Few activities are more thrilling than traveling to your ancestor's village or gravesite. Standing where your forebears walked long ago is an amazing experience. When you visit the family homestead or homeland, you can further embrace the experience by eating the local food, and drinking the local beer, wine, or beverage of choice.

Of course, you will also want to find distant cousins, if possible. There is an interesting difference between Americans and many Europeans. Americans typically look back to find ancestors while Europeans often look forward in time, wondering what happened after people went to America.

Here are some suggestions:

Before you go

Do your homework! Research your ancestors before you leave home.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/12820218.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077.

Following the Civil War, one way that millions of liberated African Americans searched for lost relatives was by writing letters.

Hawkins Wilson, born into slavery and torn from his family as a boy, wrote several to the Freedmen’s Bureau in hopes of locating his siblings.

“Dear Sir, I am anxious to learn about my sisters, from whom I have been separated many years. I have never heard from them since I left Virginia twenty four years ago,” Wilson wrote from Galveston, Texas, on May 11, 1867.

“I am in hopes that they are still living and I am anxious to hear how they are getting on. I have no other one to apply to but you and am persuaded that you will help who stands in need of your services as I do. I shall be very grateful to you if you oblige me in this matter.”

Wilson’s letters went unanswered — until now.

Wilson’s letters were discovered in Ancestry’s digitized collection of more than 3.5 million Freedmen’s Bureau records and featured in a new docu-style film, “A Dream Delivered: The Lost Letters of Hawkins Wilson.”

“A Dream Delivered” will be available through the CBS News digital streaming network on Paramount+ and Pluto TV starting June 19. You can view a preview today on your computer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnk6DHaNm_U

Ford is cracking open the vault. The automaker has launched a new website full of historic images and brochures that can be searched and shared by fans of the brand.

The Ford Heritage Vault was curated over the past two years and includes over 5,000 selections covering Ford's first century, from 1903 to 2003.

Ford archive and heritage brand manager Ted Ryan said the archive was first established 70 years ago and that this gives Ford enthusiasts an easy way to interact with it.

"This is just the first step for all that will come in the future," Ryan said.

You can take a trip down memory lane in the Ford Heritage Vault here.

You can read more in an article by Gary Gastelu and published in the Yahoo News web site at: https://news.yahoo.com/ford-heritage-vault-opens-public-100020011.html